Over the past several years, there has been an almost exponential growth in the use of the World Wide Web, also known as the Internet, particularly with regard to its ability to provide multimedia information to a user. However, in order to make the best and most efficient use of the information delivery capabilities of the Internet, a user needs to be coupled to the World Wide Web through a communication interface that ensures high-speed broadband content delivery.
Pertinent such communication interfaces include coupling to the Internet using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, which is able to afford a high-speed data communication connection to a user. DSL technology was initially conceived as a point-to-point communication methodology, with each particular user being required to subscribe to DSL service, through a local DSL service provider. DSL is one of the most common high-speed connection methodologies, although it is limited in certain respects; a user being required to have a downstream premises no more than 18,000 feet (approximately 3 miles) from a system head-end commonly located in a TELCO central office.
Although this line-length constraint necessarily limits the scope and scale of DSL usage, effectively precluding large rural areas from participating in DSL communications, a more significant limitation on DSL connectivity is its conventional requirement that the user access the system from their home premises location. If a user were required to gain Internet access from anywhere other than their home premise, they would be required to make a connection with either a dial-up modem or by utilizing a DSL connection that would be hosted by whatever premises they were visiting. Needless to say, the user would need permission and authorization to use the third-party DSL connection, as well as have the capability to bi-directionally communicate with the Internet in accordance with whatever subscription profile information was recorded against that third-party DSL point.
Additionally, most users that would wish to access the Internet at multiple times per day and from multiple diverse locations, would need to populate their portable computer systems with a number of different network interface devices; a DSL modem for Internet communication while at their home premises location and/or a dial-up modem for effecting Internet communication when away from their home premises location.
It is also pertinent that in today's business environment, a large number of business travelers will be attempting to access the Internet, for various reasons, during the course of a business day. Concentrations of business travelers can be found at hotels, airports, convention centers, and the like, all attempting to obtain information from the Internet in the most efficient manner possible. It is axiomatic that facilities of this type (i.e., hotels, transportation hubs, convention centers, etc.) have a large number of telephone access ports, typically configured as RJ-11 plugs which could serve as an ideal communication medium for DSL connectivity, if DSL service allowed a DSL subscriber to “roam”. A user would then only need to subscribe to a DSL service in order to avail themselves of DSL data communication rates by merely “plugging in” to a premises telephone jack and utilizing their personal DSL network interface device.
Implementing a system with such a capability within a remote premises, would allow that facility to offer broadband network connectivity to the premises population. Further, the concept of “roaming”, in the DSL context, would allow a DSL user to connect even though the user is no longer at their home premises. A DSL roaming connection, therefore, would be defined as any connection made by a user, as the user, at any point away from their home premises. A connection made by the user, as the user, is an important concept, since it allows a user to function as themselves in a DSL environment, and not be limited to functioning in a “guest” capacity.
Such a system, so implemented, would be able to offer each individual service subscriber a DSL connection to the network in accordance with that particular user's subscription profile record, as it was established by that user's DSL service provider. Additionally, a user's bandwidth utilization would be directly billable to the user, through the user's service provider, in accordance with the service provider's established “roaming rates”. Thus, a user would no longer be limited to the point-to-point connection methodology of present DSL service, but would be able to avail themselves of high-speed broadband information communication from any third-party premises implementing a broadband appliance that enables DSL roaming.